Game designer talks about combining point-and-click adventure with platformer.

Just looking at the screenshots for The Cave, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert had given up his favored adventure game genre in favor of a standard side-scrolling platform game. Once you play the game, though, it becomes apparent that this is actually a classic Gilbert adventure game in the guise of a platformer.

Sure, there's plenty of running and jumping in The Cave, but it's just a way to get your three controllable characters (chosen from an eclectic group of tropes ranging from a time traveler to a medieval knight) around the game's snaking 2D corridors. There's absolutely no penalty for death, and there won't be any challenges that involve careful jump timing or pinpoint landing accuracy to complete.

What there will be plenty of is the kind of convoluted, adventure-game-logic puzzles that only a genre fan could love. In the short PAX demo I tried out last weekend (which was "halfway between alpha and beta"), I was tasked with getting by a dragon that burned my characters to a crisp every time they approached. To do that, I had to first use a crowbar to tear off the crank on the side of a well, then use that crank to get a bucket up from another well, then use the bucket to stop water from dripping on a fuse box, then hook the newly detachable fuse box to a giant hot dog machine, then use the oversized snack to lure the dragon out onto a pit of spikes before finally returning the fuse to its original position and activating an oversized crane to lift it out of the way. I mean, obviously, right?

Like most of Gilbert's previous games, The Cave doesn't take itself too seriously. The Cave itself is a talking tourist attraction, a world-weary narrator, introducing itself and the seven playable characters with an acerbic, laconic wit. He comes complete with a cheesy entryway gift shop and a hilariously histrionic shop owner lamenting the lack of tchotchkes to sell, handing you an "oversized novelty key" to go in and find some merchandise, thus setting up the story.

An adventure game resurgence

Gilbert said the idea for The Cave has been percolating in his head since before Maniac Mansion was made. But he wanted to release the game now, in what he saw as a recent resurgence in the adventure game genre, highlighted by games like Telltale's Walking Dead series and the success of Double Fine's Adventure Game kickstarter. "I just think adventure games are getting more attention now because the gaming audience is a lot more mass market, and a lot of that is because of things like the iPhone," he told Ars. "You have a lot of people who would never sit down in their living room with a complicated console controller to play a game, but they're more than happy to do it on their phone. I think adventure games are very well suited to that audience. They're also slower. They're not about fast reflexes; they're about stories and characters and all these things, so that's why I think there's a resurgence."

The growth of the game industry in general has also expanded the potential audience for adventure games, Gilbert argues. "I think it's the same type of person that likes to play adventure games [today], but there are so many more of them now that are open to gaming in general," he said. "I think back in the late '80s or early '90s, if you played games, especially as an adult, you were weird. It was just not socially acceptable to be a gamer. But I take the train to and from work, and I get on that train and probably 25 percent of the people sitting in that car are playing games, and they're adults. I think it's just more socially acceptable now for gaming to be just another form of entertainment for an adult."

"I think what's interesting and healthy about our business now is you can be successful building something other than a first person shooter," he continued. "There are all these niche markets that you can actually do well in, and I just think that's healthy for our whole business."

That resurgence in adventure games didn't mean Gilbert had an easy time pitching the game to publishers, though. In fact, before Sega finally agreed to pick up the rights to the game, Gilbert said he and the development team at Double Fine ran into resistance with every publisher he pitched the game to.

"A lot of publishers are very shy about the adventure game aspects of it," he said. "They wanted a little more action, or they really weren't sure this puzzle solving is really what people want. They never say anything bad when they reject your game, they tell you all these things they love about it but 'the time just isn't right.' They'll say, 'If it was up to me I would totally sign this.' Well it is up to you!"

Pitching the game to publishers in the first place was an entirely new experience for Gilbert, who was more used to developing games internally at companies like LucasArts and Humungous Entertainment in the past. "I was having to put together all these powerpoint presentations and pitches and all this stuff that I was just not used to doing," he said. "I was used to just convincing a small group of people in the company that it was a really good idea and then making it."

And just going through the process of preparing for all of those pitch meetings actually forced Gilbert away from the more free-form "improv game design" he undertook with games like Monkey Island, he said. "The one good thing about the pitch process for me was you do have to spend a lot of time thinking about a lot of stuff ahead of time. Before, something like Monkey Island, I'd kind of just run into it, saying, 'I'll figure it out as I go,' but you really can't do that when you have a publisher. Putting together that whole pitch, I really had to think about a lot of stuff up front, which I think is good... there are still lots of things that we're adding later, saying, 'That's really funny, let's just add that,' but certainly not to the degree that we were able to with something like Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion."

While The Cave was originally announced for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, Gilbert revealed at the show that he is also working on a Wii U version of the downloadable game. That is set for release in early 2013.

"A lot of publishers are very shy about the adventure game aspects of it," he said. "They wanted a little more action, or they really weren't sure this puzzle solving is really what people want.

Puzzle solving is not a problem, bizarre dream logic is.

This is why most point-and-click adventure games are comedies. The solution, when you finally figure it out, is supposed to make you laugh. Or at least smile. It's not easy to create puzzles that are difficult enough to make you sweat, but not drive you mad and make you want to quit. It's okay to breakout a walkthrough once in a while if it helps you enjoy the game.

The thing I always hated about adventure games is the situation Kyle described, which can generally only be reached by randomly trying shit for hours in those periods between being fried.

It's the same reason I have yet to finish Twilight Princess: I can't get through the damned water temple.

I think DoubleFine's "Stacking" had a good solution to this. Allow multiple solutions for every puzzle and make it possible to find them all in one playthrough. If some tough guy was blocking a door, you could go find a doll with an "uppercut" ability to just punch your way through the problem. You could then revisit the puzzle and try to find the more traditionally difficult adventure game solution too.

Regardless of that though, Adventure games generally aren't very difficult any more, and don't rely on completely crazy adventure game logic so much. They almost always have built in hint systems too. Besides "Stacking" I'd recommend Amanita Design's "Machinarium" and delightful "Botanicula".

The thing I always hated about adventure games is the situation Kyle described, which can generally only be reached by randomly trying shit for hours in those periods between being fried.

It's the same reason I have yet to finish Twilight Princess: I can't get through the damned water temple.

I think DoubleFine's "Stacking" had a good solution to this. Allow multiple solutions for every puzzle and make it possible to find them all in one playthrough. If some tough guy was blocking a door, you could go find a doll with an "uppercut" ability to just punch your way through the problem. You could then revisit the puzzle and try to find the more traditionally difficult adventure game solution too.

Regardless of that though, Adventure games generally aren't very difficult any more, and don't rely on completely crazy adventure game logic so much. They almost always have built in hint systems too. Besides "Stacking" I'd recommend Amanita Design's "Machinarium" and delightful "Botanicula".

Adventure games aren't hard anymore because first they replaced the text parser with a handful of verbs to click on (the original monkey island) and now they've done away even with those. Now it's just a single click to "use" without having to have any idea how you are going to "use" that item or items. So ultimately, if you get stuck, you just click everything you have in you inventory with whatever if blocking you way until something happens. Quite how Boskone is "stuck for hours" is beyond me. I guess the key is to stop "randomly trying shit" and instead start "systematically trying shit".

Not to say that struggling with primitive text parsers was any fun either.

"A lot of publishers are very shy about the adventure game aspects of it," he said. "They wanted a little more action, or they really weren't sure this puzzle solving is really what people want.

Puzzle solving is not a problem, bizarre dream logic is.

No. Problem solving for avid gamers is eff'n easy. Using your imagination to creatively solve a puzzle within the narrative style of the game is harder, but also much more rewarding - not always when the solutions get too convoluted. However, a lot of the times the hints/clues are in the dialogue between characters, and really is just testimony to the attention span of different generations. If you're not paying attention to the dialogue whilst actively breaking the dialogue down, then adventure games probably isn't your forte. I'm of the type who thinks everyone should play the games they enjoy. My friend would come over and say he hated Quake and preferred Unreal (I could play both) because Quake had to fast and hectic, and then he'd ask me why I played the game. To which I would say, 'dude, it's just a game, if you don't like it, don't play it. I'm okay with the fast and hectic pace.' Also my friend loves platformers, it's his special gift to the world. Me, I can't stand platformers and avoid them like the plague.

What I'm saying is, adventure games to adventure game fanatics, the 'bizarre dream logic' is what makes the games so much fun. If the aim is to get up a wall, and you remember a ladder some where, and you just have to get that ladder, that's really boring and dull. Where's the challenge? If in some dialogue you remember something about Katapult The Great, famous for his ability to jump over walls, except he died when a wall was a little to high and was buried in a near by grave, then the game gets more fun. You gotta find the grave, and then you gotta dig up that grave, open the box, and maybe the device Katapul The Great used is partly broken, and then you use maybe a spring from a toy box, etc,etc, that adds to the texture of the story. To me that's just awesome sauce. The logic is absurd, but it connects loosely and just makes the whole thing fun. Just like the less obvious, tempt the dinosaur with a giant hot dog. That is hilarious!

No. Problem solving for avid gamers is eff'n easy. Using your imagination to creatively solve a puzzle within the narrative style of the game is harder, but also much more rewarding - not always when the solutions get too convoluted. However, a lot of the times the hints/clues are in the dialogue between characters, and really is just testimony to the attention span of different generations. If you're not paying attention to the dialogue whilst actively breaking the dialogue down, then adventure games probably isn't your forte. I'm of the type who thinks everyone should play the games they enjoy. My friend would come over and say he hated Quake and preferred Unreal (I could play both) because Quake had to fast and hectic, and then he'd ask me why I played the game. To which I would say, 'dude, it's just a game, if you don't like it, don't play it. I'm okay with the fast and hectic pace.' Also my friend loves platformers, it's his special gift to the world. Me, I can't stand platformers and avoid them like the plague.

What I'm saying is, adventure games to adventure game fanatics, the 'bizarre dream logic' is what makes the games so much fun. If the aim is to get up a wall, and you remember a ladder some where, and you just have to get that ladder, that's really boring and dull. Where's the challenge? If in some dialogue you remember something about Katapult The Great, famous for his ability to jump over walls, except he died when a wall was a little to high and was buried in a near by grave, then the game gets more fun. You gotta find the grave, and then you gotta dig up that grave, open the box, and maybe the device Katapul The Great used is partly broken, and then you use maybe a spring from a toy box, etc,etc, that adds to the texture of the story. To me that's just awesome sauce. The logic is absurd, but it connects loosely and just makes the whole thing fun. Just like the less obvious, tempt the dinosaur with a giant hot dog. That is hilarious!

Anyone even remotely interested in fun graphical adventure games ought to check out "Ben There, Dan That! " and "Time Gentlemen, Please!" by Size Five Games. ARS had a writeup about TGP at least, and they're available on Steam for cheap.

I played them both and loved them, the puzzles are bizarre at times, but solvable. The graphics are pretty bad, but functional and funny.

The key to solving puzzles the fun/rewarding way is listening to the dialog (rather than systematically guessing everything). The first time you speak with someone it is often a longer dialog, but the hint is in there somewhere. If you are stuck, just talk to everyone again. They usually directly tell you the needed hint. Sometimes the hint seems obvious in retrospect, but requires some thinking to figure it out.

I forgot to add, I'm totally getting this game. I love Ron Gilbert. I'm so glad adventure games are finally making a come back. Not only a Ron Gilbert game, but a new Tex Murphy adventure is being produced and released next year (iirc)! A new Tex Murphy adventure, and a Ron Gilbert game? What next, Lost in Monkey Island? Sam and Max!? Or if they could modernise The Dig from Lucasgames (one of the all time best adventure games ever made) with new puzzles.

Sounds like a great little game. Between my current backlog and the supported games in Kickstarter, I have more than my fill of adventure gaming, but I certainly hope Ron does well with this. He definitely deserves it.

I forgot to add, I'm totally getting this game. I love Ron Gilbert. I'm so glad adventure games are finally making a come back. Not only a Ron Gilbert game, but a new Tex Murphy adventure is being produced and released next year (iirc)! A new Tex Murphy adventure, and a Ron Gilbert game? What next, Lost in Monkey Island? Sam and Max!? Or if they could modernise The Dig from Lucasgames (one of the all time best adventure games ever made) with new puzzles.

Errrm...you do know that Telltale games made a Monkey Island game and three seasons of Sam and Max, right? They are actually rather good (even if purists will whine about them), if somewhat too easy and too short.

I really miss the adventure games of my childhood. All the (insert noun) Quest games were some of my favorites. I spend a lot of hours (sometimes frustrating ones!) searching for the right verb to type in or hunting pixels to activate something on the screen. In MY day, you had to work for your fun dag nabbit. I'm glad to see a resurgence in the adventure game. I can share with my kids some of the interesting story lines I loved so much.

"A lot of publishers are very shy about the adventure game aspects of it," he said. "They wanted a little more action, or they really weren't sure this puzzle solving is really what people want.

Puzzle solving is not a problem, bizarre dream logic is.

No. Problem solving for avid gamers is eff'n easy. Using your imagination to creatively solve a puzzle within the narrative style of the game is harder, but also much more rewarding - not always when the solutions get too convoluted. However, a lot of the times the hints/clues are in the dialogue between characters, and really is just testimony to the attention span of different generations. If you're not paying attention to the dialogue whilst actively breaking the dialogue down, then adventure games probably isn't your forte. I'm of the type who thinks everyone should play the games they enjoy. My friend would come over and say he hated Quake and preferred Unreal (I could play both) because Quake had to fast and hectic, and then he'd ask me why I played the game. To which I would say, 'dude, it's just a game, if you don't like it, don't play it. I'm okay with the fast and hectic pace.' Also my friend loves platformers, it's his special gift to the world. Me, I can't stand platformers and avoid them like the plague.

What I'm saying is, adventure games to adventure game fanatics, the 'bizarre dream logic' is what makes the games so much fun. If the aim is to get up a wall, and you remember a ladder some where, and you just have to get that ladder, that's really boring and dull. Where's the challenge? If in some dialogue you remember something about Katapult The Great, famous for his ability to jump over walls, except he died when a wall was a little to high and was buried in a near by grave, then the game gets more fun. You gotta find the grave, and then you gotta dig up that grave, open the box, and maybe the device Katapul The Great used is partly broken, and then you use maybe a spring from a toy box, etc,etc, that adds to the texture of the story. To me that's just awesome sauce. The logic is absurd, but it connects loosely and just makes the whole thing fun. Just like the less obvious, tempt the dinosaur with a giant hot dog. That is hilarious!

Developers should remember this:

There are no puzzles in life that can't be easily avoided.

The problem with the vast majority of "adventure games" is that their designers think that the genre gives them carte blanche to jerk the player around with impassable obstacles that have but a single solution, with situations that never resolve themselves just by waiting. Sadly, the scope for manipulating NPCs with a knowledge of their modus operandi and private inter-relationships which is the foundation of all drama is a social puzzle that developers deem players wouldn't be interested in mastering the subtleties of.

A new Tex Murphy adventure, and a Ron Gilbert game? What next, Lost in Monkey Island? Sam and Max!?

You say that almost like Sam and Max and Monkey Island games haven't come out in the last few years. In fact, you could argue that Telltale releasing games on those properties is the main reason there's a resurgence in adventure gaming.

Although I really really wish they'd go back to making adventure games instead of Interactive Movies. I bought all SamNMax, Monkey Island, Homestar, Bone, and Wallace and Gromit games. I have tried, but NOT bought Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, or Walking Dead games. The beginning of Back to the Future made me puke.

Adventure games aren't hard anymore because first they replaced the text parser with a handful of verbs to click on (the original monkey island) and now they've done away even with those. Now it's just a single click to "use" without having to have any idea how you are going to "use" that item or items. So ultimately, if you get stuck, you just click everything you have in you inventory with whatever if blocking you way until something happens.

I doubt you'd get very far in Machinarium by just randomly clicking on things you have...it sometimes required TOO precise use/placement of items to solve it's puzzles. You had to think through the solution and then setup the environment to get everything to fall into place. Great game.

I actually enjoyed most of the 5 parts. Decent voice acting, a story that doesn't conflict heavily with canon, funny references, etc. Not a good game to play while tired though -- the mellow intstrumental theme is pretty lulling.

I'm very interested in walking dead, while I hoped for good things from the Jurrasic Park game, but never read a decent thing about it -- so darn.

The voice acting was great. But it was jarring to go from the "fast-paced, fast-action" feel of the movie and cinematic sequences to the "take as long as you want, stroll around and pick up and look at things" speed of adventure gaming. Was weird to see Marty strolling lazily around in circles and saying things like "that's a tire" while Iranians were shooting at him.

I actually enjoyed most of the 5 parts. Decent voice acting, a story that doesn't conflict heavily with canon, funny references, etc. Not a good game to play while tired though -- the mellow intstrumental theme is pretty lulling.

I'm very interested in walking dead, while I hoped for good things from the Jurrasic Park game, but never read a decent thing about it -- so darn.

I also enjoyed the Back to the Future series. It wasn't bad at all. Not as good as Monkey Island or Sam and Max. Maybe more comparable with Wallace and Gromitt.

I purchased the Walking Dead when it was on sale on Steam last week. Haven't played it yet, but I've heard a lot of good things about it.

That's the sort of puzzle that makes me love adventure games. Dream logic may be frustrating at times, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that it doesn't make sense once you actually sit back and look at the solution after the fact. Besides, it's the sense of achievement you get from solving a difficult puzzle that makes it worth it (to me anyway).

Adventure games are too easy these days, lightly sprinkled with obvious "puzzles" that you know the solution to almost instantly and a generous helping of hand-holding. Unfortunately though, many gamers these days don't seem to have the patience to watch cut scenes or listen to dialogue in action games, let alone figure out a series of complex puzzles in an adventure game.

As a compromise, I would love to see more adventure games handled like Monkey Island 3, which is the only one I can remember ever having a true difficulty setting (though there may have been others). And by that, I don't mean a system for displaying hints more or less frequently like in Telltale adventure games (I can't imagine anyone could ever need those hints anyway, the puzzles are so easy), I mean an actual difficulty setting. MI3 had "Regular" and "Mega Monkey", with the former removing a bunch of the more convoluted puzzles that didn't directly impact the story.

The Cave is something I'll definitely be picking up the instant it's available (I got so excited when I saw the original announcement). I'm really hoping for some old school adventure puzzles and humour from both this and the Double Fine Adventure. Don't let me down guys!

Quite how Boskone is "stuck for hours" is beyond me. I guess the key is to stop "randomly trying shit" and instead start "systematically trying shit".

Because, as in this case, you have to systematically try things to trigger an unrelated event, then again, then again...

In the article something about a crowbar, two wells, a fuse box, and a giant hot dog.

Well if you go through the entire game that way then, a) it will take a while (but really not that long) and b) you won't have much fun.

The hope is that after removing the crank from the first well it would be enough to get you moving again in 'logic" mode. The point is "systematically trying shit" is what you do when you get stuck, not how you play the whole game.

Without playing the game, it's hard to tell how difficult this puzzle might be, but to be honest, at least the first part looks pretty obvious. You presumably have two wells, one with a crank but no bucket and the other with a bucket and no crank. It's pretty much adventure game SOP to grab everything you can, so even if you not yet know that you need the bucket to get past the dragon, the very fact it exists is an invitation to grab it. So it's not much of a stretch to say I need the crank on the other well. So I try and grab the crank - can't do it, it's fixed firmly. So I look in my inventory for something that can cut it off, bang it off or....pry it off. Holy cow! I have a crowbar...I wonder if that will work...click...click...hooray...a shiny new crank!

First rule of adventuring: Take everything that isn't nailed down.Second rule of adventuring: Try and take everything that is nailed down.

That puzzle is just ridiculous, and is the kind of puzzle that turns me off some adventure games. The genre is great, but the puzzles have to make some sort of logical sense - that one doesn't.

"Logical sense"? As opposed to "illogical sense"?

It's only really illogical when you look at the whole puzzle together. If you look at the individual steps (like the wells and the crank, as I explained above) they are not that great of a stretch.

I can't take the fuse box because there's water dripping on it? Use a bucket to stop the dripping water. Logical.

The hot dog machine doesn't work or isn't connected to power? Use the fuse box to connect it. Logical.

I need to move a dragon (a ravenous beast)? Use a hot dog as a lure. Logical.

The dragon is dead(?) or incapacitated after falling in the pit of spikes, but is still in the way? Use the conveniently positioned crane to move it. Logical.

But the crane doesn't work because I took the fuse out? Well, put the fuse back. Logical.

If you look at it as "I need to move the dragon" and think you can jump straight to "I need that bucket", then yeah, that doesn't make sense. But it's because you are trying to understand it from start to finish. What you need to do is work backwards.

First rule of adventuring: Take everything that isn't nailed down.Second rule of adventuring: Try and take everything that is nailed down.

Except for limited inventory space.

I haven't seen a modern adventure game with limited inventory space in I don't know how long. It's another victim of the point-and-click adventure transition that inventory items became undroppable because the developers didn't have the resources to make sure your dropped item wouldn't look out-of-place in every single location. This probably isn't the case anymore, but now it's just because an adventure trope that you have unlimited pocket space.

"I just think adventure games are getting more attention now because the gaming audience is a lot more mass market, and a lot of that is because of things like the iPhone," he told Ars. "You have a lot of people who would never sit down in their living room with a complicated console controller to play a game, but they're more than happy to do it on their phone. I think adventure games are very well suited to that audience. ...

...While The Cave was originally announced for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, Gilbert revealed at the show that he is also working on a Wii U version of the downloadable game.

Soooo... Where are the iOS and Android versions? He goes and points out how wonderfully suited adventure games are to the mobile platforms and then ignores them?

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.